


A Dying Light

by Merely_Specters



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dream Sequence, Gen, Losing sanity, Pre-Canon, Stream of Consciousness, a transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merely_Specters/pseuds/Merely_Specters
Summary: Skulduggery had never quite had an out-of-body experience like this before. He supposed it was a novelty to have a bird’s eye view of his own demise, but to be completely honest, he couldn’t care less.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	A Dying Light

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2017.

Skulduggery had never quite had an out-of-body experience like this before. He supposed it was a novelty to have a bird’s eye view of his own demise, but to be completely honest, he couldn’t care less. Nevertheless, from a point outside his body, he watched himself burn, his body on a pike, his hair plastered to his head.

Pain blurred his vision.

_Or maybe his hair wasn't plastered, maybe it was floating, maybe it was sagging, he couldn't tell. It all burned anyways, so why should he care?_

He could feel his muscles deteriorating faster and faster, ashes raining upon the executioner beside him. His face, his beautiful face, fell upon the ground, curling and melting like wax. His eyes liquified and dripped down a skeletal grin.

The darkness was taking over. Skulduggery could feel a pull on his soul from the depths of the void. That was death, he supposed, eating at his insides.

Now, the pain left him, but his vision still blurred, and his very soul burned. 

_What is burning, anyways?_

His thoughts melted, pooling at his nonexistent feet, but Skulduggery reminded himself that his feet did exist, in reality. His whole body did, even if it would never exist in its entirety again. His brains were now contained in the dust carried on the wind, careening into fissures and rivers alike. Skulduggery would have laughed, if he could, at the ludicrousness of it all. __Rivers__. Had he wanted to swim with the fishes? He would now, until they ate him up.

_Was that cannibalism, for one thing to eat another? For bone to touch bone and flesh to consume flesh?_

Fragments of jagged memories slipped away with a shout, notifying him of their presence before they abandoned him. He hadn't time to know what they were before they rode away on a railway train, waving their handkerchiefs in a lopsided salute. He was a military man, after all.

At least that's what he thought, until those memories left him too.

_What is an army, and does it exist?_

_Army. Soldier. War. Magic_. Magic. What an unfamiliar word. Skulduggery made a clicking motion with his hands before realizing that he had no hands at all; he was figment of his own imagination. He snorted, and laughed as his sanity departed, piece by piece, along with the final few images, memories.

An infant, a wife, a crest. It sounded like the punchline of a joke.

The final tendrils of life were stripped from him. __Where will I go__ , he wondered. Heaven or down below? Would he be lifted up by choirs of angels? Would they bear the faces of fallen friends? Maybe his face would be plastered upon them all.

Anger, numbness, sadness, cirrus, nimbus, stratus all clouded his mind as he fought against... what? What had he been fighting against, exactly? Skulduggery recalled nothing as a man snuffed out the flames beneath his broken body. He dared not breathe, though his breath was fake and temporary, as the man ripped off his head. The executioner held it up in triumph, yelling some kind of battle cry. It hurt his ruptured eardrums.

He was dropped. His head came tumbling down the hill, stopping at the feet of a man with a burning torch.

_What an odd word, fire._

Skulduggery’s remains were put into a sack, and then the rest of him was put there too; he reunited with his body parts. And so, Skulduggery’s body was dumped on the side of a road.

_Why can I still think?_

__

_Will I soon stop?_

__

Skulduggery didn't know if he was dead, really. Why, then, could he think with such clarity? He pondered that fact even as his thoughts left him, and then he could no longer think at all.

__

All that was left was his name. An empty corpse.

__

Darkness overcame him.

__

It was dark, dark, even darker than he had thought possible. It was darker than the soul of the man who had killed his family. It was darker than the shadows of their corpses. Emotion, thought, morality no longer existed, yet a few phrases permeated the dying soul.

__

_I was killed. My murderer deserves to die._ Nothing was more certain than that fact. His murderer deserved to die.

__

Anger twisted, writhed like a maggot in Skulduggery’s skull. He raged. He needed revenge.

__

He had been killed. They had killed him.

__

They deserved to die.

__

A twisted, dark energy blossomed within his bosom. They _did_ deserve to die.

__

A new purpose resonated in his mind, enlarging, feeding on the most miniscule wisps of life still left in his skull. Nothing existed but the voice.

__

“Kill them,” it whispered.

__

They deserved to die. 

__

They _all_ deserved to die.

__

Skulduggery laughed a crooked, unnatural laugh, something he would have recoiled from whilst he lived.

__

But he lived no longer.

__

All of a sudden, his memories came flooding back in overwhelming torrents; feelings of happiness, joy, sadness, grief, but most of all: anger. Overpowering, massive emotion stifled him, agitating him until he was in a frenzy.

__

_Kill them all._

__

He screamed into the darkness, reaching out of the pit he had somehow fallen into, clawing his way out of death itself with the power of fury alone. He landed on the ledge of life, and took a glance upwards. He saw sanity, that blessed thing, and started climbing. 

__

He made it just below, grabbing the landing with feeble fingers, but didn't pull himself up. He saw the golden caress of daylight and flinched at the overwhelming brightness. He stole a glance at the darkness below. It was inviting, and promised a life of pleasure and vengeance.

__

The chaos was silenced for a moment.

__

A whisper. “Vengeance.”

__

Skulduggery looked at the light above him; justice beckoned him with open arms. He was so tempted to reach up and grab her hand and fight with his friends, his dear friends, and bring his enemies to her. He almost did.

__

But vengeance was far more appealing.

__

He looked up one last time, knowing that he might not see goodness like that ever again, and smiled a knowing smile, a secret little thing for justice to see. He would come back, he promised to her, with his fingers crossed behind his back.

__

Skulduggery Pleasant closed his eyes and fell back into the abyss.

__

Lord Vile woke up.

__


End file.
